Tuesday, April 26, 2016

I am
interviewed at some length in the Spring 2016 issue of The Dartmouth Apologia on the subjects of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics,
classical theism, and related matters. You
can read the interview and the rest of the issue here. And while you’re at it, check out the Apologia’s main website, where you’ll
find past interviews and other features from the magazine.

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Feser has found that Aristotelian-Thomistic
teaching is a strong, coherent system that can provide clarity and answers in
vexing contemporary debates… Feser writes admirably, with a clear, direct style
that is polemical but not uncharitable or contentious… These would make excellent
texts to offer to students... The clarity may also be appreciated by
professional readers as a refreshing change from the sometimes fusty level of
detail in recent work on natural theology -- instead, Feser allows us to
refocus on perennial issues…

Feser has a gift for seeing the heart
of a problem, as well as a gift for clear expression and high-quality, fair
polemic -- these factors, together, offer the best reasons to read anything
written by him, and this work is no exception.

Friday, April 15, 2016

A number of
readers have called my attention to a recent podcast during which William Lane
Craig is asked for his opinion about theistic personalism, the doctrine of
divine simplicity, and what writers like David Bentley Hart and me have said
about these topics. (You can find the
podcast at
Craig’s website, and also at YouTube.) What follows are some comments on the
podcast. Let me preface these remarks by
saying that I hate to disagree with Craig, for whom I have the greatest respect. It should also be kept in mind, in fairness
to Craig, that his remarks were made in an informal conversational context, and
thus cannot reasonably be expected to have the precision that a more formal,
written treatment would exhibit.

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

My review of
David Bentley Hart’s The
Experience of God appears in Pro Ecclesia, Vol. XXV, No.
1 (the Winter 2016 issue). (Yes, the
book has been out for a while, but the review was written almost a year
ago. The review doesn’t seem to be
online at the moment, unfortunately.)

Sunday, April 10, 2016

New Atheist
pamphleteer John Loftus is like a train wreck orchestrated by Zeno of Elea: As
Loftus rams headlong into the devastating objections of his critics, the chassis,
wheels, gears, and passenger body parts that are the contents of his mind proceed
through ever more thorough stages of pulverization. And yet somehow, the grisly disaster just
never stops. Loftus continues on at full
speed, tiny bits of metal and flesh reduced to even smaller bits, and those to
yet smaller ones, ad infinitum. You feel you ought to turn away in horror, but nevertheless find yourself settling
back, metaphysically transfixed and reaching for the Jiffy Pop.

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Being
insulted by the pop atheist writer John Loftus is, to borrow Denis Healey’s
famous line, like being savaged by a dead sheep. It is hard to imagine that a human being
could be more devoid of argumentative or polemical skill. Commenting on my recent First Things exchange with atheist philosopher
Keith Parsons, Loftus
expresses bafflement at Parsons’ preference for the Old Atheism over the
New Atheism. Unable to see any good
reason for it, Loftus slyly concludes: “Keith
Parsons is just old. That explains why
he favors the Old Atheism.” He also
suggests that Parsons simply likes the attention Christians give him.

Well, as longtime
readers of this blog will recall from his sometimes
bizarre combox antics, Loftus certainly knows well the reek of attention-seeking
desperation. Sadly, being John Loftus,
he tends to misidentify its source.

Friday, April 1, 2016

Antony
Flew’s famous 1950 article “Theology
and Falsification” posed what came to be known as the “falsificationist
challenge” to theology. A claim is
falsifiable when it is empirically testable -- that is to say, when it makes
predictions about what will be observed under such-and-such circumstances such
that, if the predictions don’t pan out, the claim is thereby shown to be false. The idea that a genuinely scientific claim
must be falsifiable had already been given currency by Karl Popper. Flew’s aim was to apply it to a critique of
such theological claims as the thesis that God loves us. No matter what sorts of evil and suffering
occur in the world, the theologian does not give up the claim that God loves
us. But then, what, in that case, does
the claim actually amount to? And why
should we accept the claim? Flew’s
challenge was to get the theologian to specify exactly what would have to
happen in order for the theologian to give up the claim that God loves us, or
the claim that God exists.

About Me

I am a writer and philosopher living in Los Angeles. I teach philosophy at Pasadena City College. My primary academic research interests are in the philosophy of mind, moral and political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. I also write on politics, from a conservative point of view; and on religion, from a traditional Roman Catholic perspective.